Celebrity Politics

I came across the following quote from a concerned Labour MP - Steve McCabe from Birmingham  apparently  who had plenty to say it appears about the decision of a fellow MP - Nadine Dorries (Conservative) - to appear on the TV programme 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here':

"It is shameless that a Conservative MP thinks it is right to spend time boosting her own profile on a reality TV show in Australia instead of fighting for jobs and growth in Britain. David Cameron is so weak he cannot even stop his backbenchers appearing on TV when they should be standing up for their constituents. He should get a grip."

Now I have no time for the likes of Nadine Dorries - to me she's a joke and if voters in the UK possessed a 'power of recall' over their elected representatives (as they do in other countries) - she'd be out on her ear in double quick time.

So I applaud the Conservative Party's decision to suspend the Whip from Nadine Dorries - for what amounts to thumbing her nose at her constituents in Mid-Bedfordshire - instead of getting on with the day job that she is paid to do on their behalf.

What I would say though is that Nadine Dorries is no worse than some of the MPs on the Labour benches - including the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former Foreign Secretary - both of whom are away form the House of commons for long periods of time.

Even longer than Nadine will spend in Australia making a fool of herself at the taxpayers expense - but is it fair that Nadine should take all the flak? 

Of course not - it's time that other part-time MPs were called to account and made to choose between their day jobs and sometimes very lucrative extra-parliamentary careers.

Number Crunching (8 October 2012)

The latest edition of Private Eye contains some interesting information regarding the two Miliband brothers - Ed and David.

According to the Eye:

Number Crunching

"65% - is the percentage of Labour supporters who said they would prefer David Miliband to Ed as leader.

65k (or £65,000) - is an MP's salary at Westminster to which David Miliband has added £398,000 of extra-parliamentary earnings in the past year, which probably makes him in no hurry to take over."

Now as far as I can recall the Labour Party always took a dim view of MPs taking on other external roles and responsibilities - because the job of a Member of Parliament was always regarded as a full-time.

Yet two Labour MPs very close to the Labour leader - David Miliband (his older brother) and Gordon Brown (his former boss) - devote huge amounts of time to extra-curricular activities to the extent that they both operate as part-time MPs - and no one says a thing.

To my mind it makes the Labour Party look foolish and hypocritical.

Never mind whether we're all in this together - some people (who should know better) - are having a great old time by playing both sides off against the middle.